Eco-friendly

People are getting a bit more eco-friendly I think, or at least I like to think that we're all taking more interest in keeping the Earth healthy. We are trying to teach our children about how they can make a difference and we are taking ecologically friendly vacations that encourage us to see nature without leaving any trace of our passage.

Eco-friendly even touches us at home, where there is a trend toward having a more environmentally friendly home environment. Trash is sorted for its recycling category (paper, plastic, glass), there are small compost bins that can sit on even an apartment's counter top, and furniture is moving away from what I think of as the disposable styles and toward solid reusable furniture that can be used for years. It was an item of furniture, in fact, that caused me to think about this. The Stokke Tripp Trapp chair. If you have not seen one of these multi level highchairs, then you should take a look. I'm not sure that I would have named a highchair "trip trap", but I can not really fault the idea behind the thing. A chair that can adjust to grow with your child, removing the necessity for buying a highchair, booster seat and whatever else marks the passage from when a child first sits up to eat and their late night study at a desk in their college dorm room.

I can easily see it as a chair that, with proper care over the years, would make the transition from dining room high chair to bedroom desk chair to a dorm room. And that is what we're looking for, right? A simple way to make a difference in the planet, a way that we can make something last for the long term, that we can leave less of a scar in the form of trash on the planet. I doubt if a chair can save the planet, but I do think that it is the little things that we can all do that will one day make a difference we and our descendants will notice.